Good Dirt

In Wilkerson’s incohesive sophomore novel (after Black Cake), the daughter of a prominent Black New England family contends with heartbreak and trauma. Having recently been left at the altar by her white fiancé, Henry, Ebby is unwillingly back in the spotlight. When she was 10, her name was in the papers after she’d witnessed an armed robber kill her 15-year-old brother, Baz, in their home. Nine months after the breakup, Ebby accepts an offer to manage her friend’s rental house in rural France, where she plans to write down the history of a clay pot made by an enslaved craftsman that had been passed down by the Freemans for 150 years, until it was broken the night of Baz’s death. Her plans are disrupted, however, when Henry and his new girlfriend turn out to be the house’s first guests. The novel poses intriguing questions about the nature of legacy and race relations, and though Wilkerson attempts to connect the plot’s various strands through the story of the jar, revealing, for instance, that Henry might know something about the night it was broken, the pieces don’t quite come together. Readers will be disappointed. Agent: Madeleine Milburn, Madeleine Milburn Literary. (Jan.)